I Will Never Give Up, Alexander

False claims of domestic violence, child abuse, and child rape. 

This has been my life for 3 years as I fight for my sons rights to have a relationship with his father.

DOMESTIC VIOLENCE CLAIMS = CHILEAN DIVORCE:

It started in September 2018, when my ex-wife decided to activate her legal plan by going through with her multi-year threats of divorce, by following the traditional Chilean practice of false domestic abuse accusations. You see, there was domestic violence…monthly…but I was the recipient. 

It’s rarely spoken of with men when we are victims because we feel we need to hide it out of gender-bias shame.

 I would speak to her parents about it routinely, sought help with a therapist to learn how to deal with it other than walking away. I made the mistake in Spain, when reporting her to the police, not to leave her when the Sant Cugat police told me there was nothing they could do as she had diplomatic immunity. My US embassy said the same.

By not leaving the marriage then, it shifted the jurisdiction to Chile. 

DIVORCE DID NOT EXIST IN CHILE UNTIL 2004.

I repeat, there were no divorces in Chile until 2004…just 14 years before my marriage ended.

So the way to end marriages in Chile until 2004, fully recommended and practiced by Chilean lawyers, was for the wife to falsely accuse the husband of domestic violence. This was how a marriage was ended in Chile. Lawyers practicing law prior to the 2004 law change still adhere to this practice. This is not a conspiracy theory, nor speculation…this is fact.

So on September 11, 2018, a day after being violently attacked by my ex-wife resulting in multiple bloody tears to the back of my neck and her biting a large piece of my lip off, she told me to pack ALL of my belongings and leave “her” home immediately.

As I packed a bag for Malia and I to goto a hotel for the night, all while on the phone with her father (a doctor who is fully aware of her Borderline Personality Disorder, history of violence towards me, and her history of no less than 9 Suicide attempts), she called the police telling me she wants me out of the apartment. She hit me, spit at me, told me she was going to “ruin me”.

The police arrived and kept using the word “victima”. I corrected them and said “estoy el victimo”, meaning “male”, and that I was the victim. 

As I was alone in the living room with the police, my ex left the room for 5 minutes. She returned and had clearly hurt herself in the bathroom while alone. I saw bruises on her face. She went all-in with her lies.

This is how Chilean divorce happens.

I spent a night in a Chilean prison, then handcuffed and locked to a transport van the next day with “other” violent criminals and transported for arraignment in the city court house, filled with thousands of other arrestees. It was a nightmare. My Spanish was good enough with the court-ordered public lawyer to make it clear: I was not guilty and wouldn’t accept any deal that involved me falsely claiming guilt when I was not only innocent but also THE victim. 

Even worse, this is how Chilean mothers ensure they get custody of the children. The moment I was falsely arrested, she got full custody.

Mothers in Chile have a collective 99.9% custody rate of children. Again, this is not an exaggeration, it is a fact. And in cases when the father is a foreigner, they have 100% custody.

JOINT CUSTODY IS NOT LEGAL IN CHILE.

You read they correctly. One parent has custody, the other gets “visits”.

Mothers have 99.9% of custody.

Fathers have no rights.

Fathers just pay child support and are at the mercy of the mother regarding visits as the courts don’t enforce the visits because, as you would guess…if the mother has custody, she cannot be arrested for violating a legal visit agreement, because…you’re following it correctly…the child would have no custodial guardian if the mother were in jail.

Note that the amount I pay in Child Support is equal to 1-month of my ex’s salary.

As you probably would imagine, since all of the evidence of domestic violence with the court, including voice recordings I had of my ex, that psychologists had listened to, where she admitted to the routine violence episodes… the court case was dismissed against me. 

I won.

So that brings us to the role of CHILD ABUSE in the legal system in Chile:

It took me 8 months of legal pressure just to get to see Alexander. At my lawyers recommendation, she said to take what I can get to rebuild the relationship with Alexander starting May 2019.

This meant (2) visits per week for 1.5 hours each, at a “kids cafe” or a park, WITH his nanny present. 

Alexander and I have a great relationship and have fun regardless. I even had an invitation from my ex to Alexander’s school for a September 11, 2019 dance recital to celebrate September 18th, Chileans national holiday.

But in August 2019, my ex decided to take a trip the north of Chile with Alexander, without my consent. I went to pick him up for the visit, and he wasn’t there. I told my lawyers and they reported it. My ex took great offense to this.

So on September 11, i waited for her at Alexander’s school, saving her a seat so that Alexander would see his parents together in the audience. In a fit, when she arrived, she called the police and said I wasn’t allowed to be there. Note that I was only there, I only knew about the event, because my ex invited

Me.

I couldn’t risk another false arrest, so I left and didn’t see Alexander’s dance.

The next day I had a visit with Alexander at the kids cafe. At one point, he was misbehaving and licking his fingers and sticking them into all of the sugar jars. I kept asking him not to and explained that it was not acceptable behavior. I was being a parent, or at least what you’d expect from an American parent. I took his hand out of the jar and told him he needed to stop, that he was behaving badly. 

The nanny, not an English speaker, only understood the word “bad” and said, in Spanish, that in Chile, you can’t tell children that they are “bad”. She said she was ending the visit early and taking Alexander home.

So what did my ex do? She refused to let me see Alexander again, always her goal, and accused me of child abuse. She went as far as to either hurt Alexander on his back or claim that there were bruises on his back that came from me. Meanwhile, Alexander only claimed the truth, that I removed his hand from the sugar.

So after about 25 hours worth of visits in 1 year, I was not seeing Alexander again.

Fast forward to February 2020 and in court, my ex and I agreed to a visitation schedule and plan to escalate over time to Alexander sleeping over.

It was not a good deal. It was a bad deal in fact, because I had to agree to a “guarantor” or babysitter being present for the first stage. But again, my lawyer said that after not seeing Alexander for 5 months, and barely seeing him in 2019, that I should focus on building the relationship with him.

The guarantor was supposed to last for only 1 month starting in March 2020. It’s now August 2021.

March 2020 came and the visits started. Then after 2 weeks, I went to pick him up and he was not there, there was no answer at the apartment. 

Turns out my ex had moved to Arica, Chile…1300 miles away.

My lawyers fought to force her to return with Alexander but the court wouldn’t budge because of the pandemic. So in June 2020, I flew to Arica and moved there. 

At first, it was as if my ex had a moment of clarity and realized how important a relationship with a father is to a young boy. She brought him to my apartment at the beach each day. I cooked for him, and her, each day. We celebrated Malia dog’s birthday on June 30, 2020. He was so happy.

But then the demon appeared again from my ex. The overbearing, smothering mother who forced my son to wear a winter jacket on the beach while other kids his age were swimming in the ocean.

She stopped bringing him over. 

And with a quarantine, it was impossible to find a guarantor there. It was illegal to leave the home and there are checkpoints everywhere. I had permission from the court to pick up Alexander from his grandparents, but there was no permission for a guarantor to work.

After months of not seeing Alexander, I found someone willing to take the risk. And I got to see Alexander 2x per week in August.

In September, we all returned to Santiago and the visits went well. November came and I even invited my ex for Thanksgiving so that Alexander could have a family holiday. 

Christmas came, then New Years, then Alexander’s birthday on January 18. My ex would not allow me to be with Alexander for his “family” party, instead, he and I had to celebrate at my place. But we were together at least.

During this time, starting in September 2020, the court-ordered family therapy from Feb 2020 finally started. 

It was difficult, as my ex did not use this as an opportunity for growth, but to still go all-in on her strategy of lies.

The role of the therapist was to deem me fine as a parent to no longer need a guarantor and for Alexander to start weekend sleepovers.

On Thursday, March 4th, the family therapist contacted me directly and said she was going to write her report that weekend to skip Phase 2 (no guarantor) and go directly to Phase 3 (Alexander sleeping over).

An hour later we did the session with my ex and the therapist shared this news with my ex.

My ex responded by saying she would do everything in her power to block it.

I had my visit on March 6th and it was a great visit. 

But later that day, my ex reached out to the family therapist and accused me of RAPING Alexander. Note that there is a guarantor present during the visits at all times. So what my ex did was not only make a horrendous claim against me as a father, but besmirch the professionalism of the university certified guarantor by claiming she was involved.

As expected, due to these false claims, the family therapist needed to excuse herself from the case. Her recommendation, spoken but not yet written, was never submitted to the court.

Even though the courts continue to tell my ex that she has to permit the visits and the agreed phone calls, she refuses. 

Again, because the courts won’t arrest her as she has custody and they can’t arrest her if it means Alexander would have nobody.

This is my reality.

I haven’t seen Alexander since March 6, 2021.

I’m haven’t spoken to him since early July and the calls are pointless as my ex will only allow the calls when she’s playing with him or he’s watching TV. She permits me to be an observer only these past 3 years.

What I am going through is a reality for many fathers. Please hold your children tightly, show them love, and for those of you reading this who are divorced, please, please do what is best for your child. 

A child needs the love from both of their parents. Going out of your way to hurt the person you married and failed with as a couple ONLY harms the child. 

Don’t hurt your children. Love them. Encourage them to have strong bonds with the other parent. That is something we all signed up for as parents: to put our children first.

So please, support fathers’ rights.